AI Is Greatly Lowering The Integrity And Standards Of A PhD Award – OpEd
The advancement of artificial intelligence (AI) has already heavily impacted the credibility of the PhD or Doctorate of Philosophy. AI has long been used to assist students in undertaking literature searches, but now the technology is fully capable of creating a whole thesis in a matter of a few days.
Not only can AI create a thesis, but even the primary research materials, such as interviews can skilfully be created using AI. By using advanced settings, any AI generated data can closely resemble the syntax and idiosyncrasies of target interviewee cohorts. A number of psychology and sociology-based research journal papers have already been withdrawn and/or removed from journals, because it was discovered the data was generated by AI. Such ethical violations have been rising exponentially in the academic world of late.
Creating a thesis by AI is an easy option to the old days when internet didn’t exist and almost half the time of a PhD candidate’s working time was looking for and reading articles in libraries. Sometimes students would have to wait months for some obscure article or book can be found in some far-off library and borrowed. The work that once could take a year of more can now be done in a day.
Today AI is fully capable of developing a flawless hypothesis, generate a complete literature review, and finally discuss and analyse any date and results to a satisfactory standard to satisfy PhD examiners. As mentioned above, with even the data artificially generated, a whole thesis can be fabricated.
A new industry has developed
Ethics and integrity are the only gateways that are set up to prevent such fraudulent activity. However, today unfortunately, very little integrity and ethics exist in academia. Previously, PhD candidates had the noble ambition to further their own knowledge in scientific and philosophic domains, and usually ended up in research or teaching roles. The numbers were very low. However, today, the PhD, master of DBA degrees are desired for getting high paying jobs, and gaining a title that would garner them a persona of respect within the community.
AI now allows the masses to achieve this. Those who undertake the PhD process with the aim of defrauding it, must find a supervisor, who is willing to take part in the conspiracy. Unfortunately, there are so many willing to do that. The supervisor can hide from the faculty, the fact that the thesis was not created through numbers of drafts, until the final thesis was ready. In this way, a PhD candidate can be presented to examiners without they being wise to the fact the thesis was AI generated.
Spotting an AI generated thesis requires some skill. They are generally flawless documents. However, some supervisors know how to counter this with “implanting” small mistakes and error to remain above this suspicion. The key to exposing any AI generated thesis comes down to the viva, where the candidate will be asked questions. In addition, examiners must delve into a person’s academic background to gauge whether they would be capable of undertaking such research.
Creating AI generated thesis is rapidly growing into a lucrative business. If USD 2,000 for a master thesis and USD 15,000 for a PhD thesis are the going rates, then some unscrupulous academics can make a lot of money, and easy money at that. The only extra skill that is needed is mastering AI software in a way to create what is needed for candidates. Don’t be shocked to know that there are some people making big money on this gravy train.
The bottom line for society is that the PhD is now becoming almost worthless. Any PhD holder will now become a suspect of being an AI graduate. The same goes for master and DBA graduates. Feeding this fraudulence is the high number of students who demand this service. The most lucrative place to undertake this activity is in institutions where large numbers of foreign students attend.
AI will supplement the pockets of those who want to flaunt the system, and make money. AI is already taking over the jobs of journalists, teachers, and any other job that requires knowledge, because AI can replace the need for knowledge.
This is a major problem for academia, which until now is not speaking up about this issue. There is complete silence in the halls of learning today. The long-term risks are that future PhD graduates may take on critical jobs where lives depend, thus endangering the community. Meanwhile, there are unscrupulous academics enjoying the AI windfall.
